Unbeknowst to you, your computer could be a double agent, committing cybercrime as part of a internet-connected botnet. Over 2.2 million American PCs are part of some botnet, according to Microsoft. (Source: Ubisoft)

Over 2.2 million PCs in
the U.S. are infected with a virus that makes them part of one of the
internet's massive botnets. The term "botnet" refers
to a group of connected computers that can be used for ill purposes
such as spamming, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and
mass credit card fraud.

Brazil came in second place for most
infected computers, with 550,000 botnet-infected PCs. Per
computer population, though South Korea had the highest rate (though
its total number of infected machines is lower than that of the U.S.
or Brazil). In South Korea 14.6 out of 1,000 PCs are in a
botnet, versus 5.2 computers out of 1,000 in the U.S.

Cliff
Evans, head of security and identity at Microsoft UK, comments to BBC
News,
"Most people have this idea of a virus and how it used to
announce itself. Few people know about botnets."

Fewer
people perhaps know about Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool
(MRT). MRT has been is a free tool Microsoft includes with
Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. First released in
2005, the tool is easy to run -- just go to "Start", type
"run" in the search bar, and then type "mrt"
(case insensitive) in the resulting popup. The tool will then
activate and be ready to scan your computer and remove many common
types of malware.

Perhaps if everyone learns how to use the
MRT, America can escape earning the dubious distinction of being the
world's biggest botnet participant in 2011. Given the general
public's ignorance
of security, that seems unlikely, though.

Despite the
difficulty in getting the public to practice proper security,
Microsoft is taking steps to try to win the war against botnet
masters on its own. The company recently seized
control over 276 internet domains that were being used by
botnet owners. And it has beefed
up the securityof its most recent operating system, Windows 7,
making it harder to infect new PCs.

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quote: Not a Mac advocate, but apparently all the safeguards in Windows Vista and 7 couldn't stop this from remote code execution: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin... Oh, and btw, this is what hacked Google in China. Microsoft knew of the vulnerability months earlier but did not release the patch until Google went public with the attack. So much for Microsoft security. Nothing's changed.

Mac advocate or not, the bulletin you linked has nothing to do with the Windows Operating System. It's for Internet Explorer. Those are completely separate software entities and you can use one to infer that the other is insecure.

It would be like myself (or another poster) linking a known defect with Safari web browser and claiming that Mac OS X is insecure. That is simply not the case, Safari has a problem, not Mac OS X.

quote: Mac advocate or not, the bulletin you linked has nothing to do with the Windows Operating System. It's for Internet Explorer. Those are completely separate software entities and you can use one to infer that the other is insecure. It would be like myself (or another poster) linking a known defect with Safari web browser and claiming that Mac OS X is insecure. That is simply not the case, Safari has a problem, not Mac OS X.

Wrong.

IE built into Vista and Win7 has new safeguards preventing code execution out of the browser, aka sandboxing. They've said that any vulnerability, even if it was a zero day exploit, could not control IE to hack the computer.

The OP was referring to new technologies built into the OS to prevent exploits. None of those prevented remote code execution according to Microsoft.

And seeing as how they again, sat on a fix for months before releasing it until it became a PR issue means it's business as usual for Microsoft.

They are separate entities, although its a bit more complicated than that. I think there is a core package that must be installed whether you are using IE or not.

But its not like it used to be, built directly into Windows Explorer.

P.S Where did you see they withheld anything? MS releases security patches all the time(patch Tuesday for non critical, and a critical patch if required), why would this be a PR nightmare over other IE flaws that have been patched?

quote: But its not like it used to be, built directly into Windows Explorer.

Where did I say it was? I said it has new safeguards ONLY available in Vista/Win7.

quote: P.S Where did you see they withheld anything? MS releases security patches all the time(patch Tuesday for non critical, and a critical patch if required), why would this be a PR nightmare over other IE flaws that have been patched?

quote: The vulnerability used in the attacks (CVE-2010-0249) was privately reported to Microsoft last August by Meron Sellen, a white-hat hacker at BugSec, an Israeli security research company. Microsoft program manager Jerry Bryant said the company confirmed the severity of the flaw in September and planned to ship a fix in a cumulative IE update next month.

quote: Oh, and btw, this is what hacked Google in China. Microsoft knew of the vulnerability months earlier but did not release the patch until Google went public with the attack.

It was an IE6 exploit on an unpatched machine.. which was being used in a production environment.

The fault lies 100%^100 on Google.

Anyone who knows anything about security knows that MS is more active than pretty much anyone. Security through obscurity is reality, and MS is targeted because of its large share. You are kidding yourself if you think other OS markers have a bigger focus on security than MS. If all the MS virus/malware creates started targeting OSX for example, they would have a field day. This is well known among the security community.

yes the exploit affects ie 6-8 on winxp - win7 but that's only if you don't have DEP enabled (i think it was) and that's enabled by defualt on ie8. People with the newest browser would have been somewhat safe. Not trying to defend ms here but i think you're over-reacting a bit here. nobody's perfect and exploits will happen on the worlds most used platform.

besides you don't know why they took so long to patch it, perhpas it was just difficult to patch without breaking something else. they obvioulsy didn't want to announce the bug to the world if it remained unpatched for whatever reason.

I mean, it's not like it was hundreds of thousands of citizens machines that got hit, it was google (who should have known better than to use an outdated browser in the first place). I think people give ms much more crap then they deserve. linux distros are really nice, they are not a viable alternative to windows in the main stream. and besides, linux has had it's fair share of security issues which took a little while to get patched just the same, or does someone not remember the faulty key randomization issue they had a few years ago.

testing is one thing, but what i'm referring to is patch development. it's not as easy as "oh there's a problem, lets poop out a patch. patching can be tricky because usually patching one thing can break others. sometimes figureing out a way to fix a major feature without totally breaking things or crippling your software can be not only tricky and difficult but nearly impossable.

i write code from time to time and patching the hole in the wall applications i write can take me weeks and sometimes months to do. here you have microsoft, a company that writes apps with millions upon millions of lines of code devided in to dev teams that all work different parts of the software and it's a major app that HAS to work in all aspects on TONS of different hardware platforms with many different software configurations. I'm amazed they get most of the patches out in the time frames they do to be perfictally honest!

MS might not be perfect but be reasonable, i think they deserve a little more slack than they get.

BUT, the fact remains that those who are targeted most have to make more of an effort to claim the same security level, and MS makes billions half-assing it while the rest do it for free and ultimately ARE more secure by the very reason mentioned.

The fault does not rely on Google. WTF is wrong with you? MS releases crap and you think people need to upgrade? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? Nobody should ever upgrade browser versions, there should never be gaping security holes in ANY version. IF a company that rich and lazy can't debug and patch a version, the last thing you should do is buy into (USE) their next, supposedly "fixed" version.

To say it is googles fault is ludicrous, the very last thing they should ever do if the software is insecure is use more software from the same company that refused to secure it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Think hard about that, oddly you seem to have a double standard about software that wouldn't apply to any other product mankind has ever known.